Zombie Cliche Lookout: Pulling it Out
Today’s cliche has nothing to do with zombie fiction. Rather, it is simply a truism from life. It can be hard for us to admit unpleasant things, and infinitely more so when we are directly responsible for those bad things. This difficulty is, naturally, twofold. First, simply voicing a terrible truth helps to solidify it for us. We can no longer deny it and must admit that it is true. Secondly, taking personal responsibility for any failing is difficult, but the scales tip sharply as the consequences of our actions become more severe..
Many people will claim that the younger generations are particularly bad about this, but I don’t think that’s true at all. Perhaps self-honesty is part of the maturation process, or perhaps people don’t realize how frequently they self-delude. Regardless, I think taking responsibility for mistakes remains difficult regardless of when you were born.
About this Episode:
I really enjoy mixing up the time of day in the strips, and having a lot of the episodes take place at night (or at least in the dark somehow). That said, it does take a bit of the detail out of the photography. I could probably get around this by doing actual low-light photography, rather than just faking it in Photoshop. That’s still a work in progress, as I haven’t been able to get anything that looks good consistently.
Discussion Question: What’s Barb to Do?
One again, step into Barb’s shoes. Clark has just told her some rough news, and it looks like he’s cracking up a bit from the pressure. What do you do next? Do you take his word for it and move on? Head back to the house and hope to find someone still alive? Maybe go back to at least put them out of their misery? How are you going to deal with Clark?
Cliche:
Yeah. It sucks having to own up to the shit we’ve done. Especially when that shit got people eaten by zombies.
About the episode:
It’s nice to see different lightings in the comic. Nighttime, daytime, sewer time, elevator time. All unique lightings. 🙂
It’d be nice to see a shot, at the cabin, with the morning sun shining through the window. Maybe onto the group, sleeping.
That would probably be very hard to do, though.
(You might have done something like that, a while ago. It sounds familiar.)
Discussion Question:
If clark told me that he saw them all get eaten (and that it’s still dangerous), then I guess I’d have to trust him and leave. But if he’s obviously being deceptive, then I’d go back. Hopefully he doesn’t resist, and try to take the van. 😮
😉
“It’d be nice to see a shot, at the cabin, with the morning sun shining through the window. Maybe onto the group, sleeping.
That would probably be very hard to do, though.”
I absolutely want to do this. I’ve tried a couple times but haven’t been able to manage it, and kind of gave up. I’m going to see if I can’t find a photography tutorial on it now that you’ve reminded me.
I think it might be less of a tutorial thing, and more of whether you can find adjustable lighting. How hard is it to use a dimmer switch to dim a light up or down to where it looks like morning light? 😀
Typo alert: “Secondly, taking personal responsibility for any failing is difficult, but the scales up sharply as the consequences of are actions become more severe.”
I think it would read better thusly: “Secondly, taking personal responsibility for any failing is difficult, but the scales tip sharply as the consequences of our actions become more severe.”
Either way, Dave definitely needs to rewrite this sentence. 😀
“how frequently the self-delude” the–>they
A tricky typo and an easy one! There you go, Dave, have at them! 😀
Fixed both, thank you, sir!
As to the Discussion Question: It really depends on what Barb knows of Clark. To be totally honest if she’d been with the group with Stewart and Murphy and known he was a loner type, she would’ve probably put him out of his misery right away! 😀
Given that she knows very little of him, however, she might consign herself to whatever fate the others have been forced into, or maybe she’ll use the cliche line of “We’ll talk more about this later.”
A logical next step would be interrogating Clark, and getting him debriefed as to what actually happened. However, Barb’s a nurse, and I’m not sure she’s had any formal military training, so maybe this wouldn’t occur to her, and it’s a bit impractical to be doing this on the side of the road, anyway! 😀
If she does learn of what actually happened, she might want to go back and see if there’s anything left to salvage, or for that matter, rescue survivors, if at all possible.
I’m quite a bit more interested to see if Barb wants to go the hard route and bully Clark into a confession, or if he’s just going to naturally lose self-control and spill the beans all too willingly.
One thing that could happen is if Barb and Clark get in the cab of the truck, and drive off somewhere. This might enable some interrogation from her, and it shouldn’t be that difficult driving a truck whilst interrogating Clark’s actions, or lack thereof. 😀
Clark really has a lot of explaining to do, too, I’m interested to see which way Dave wants to play all of this out. Hopefully we’ll be back with these two next week! 😀
Wow, awesome answer! You hit on a lot of different options, a couple of which I wish I had thought of to be honest.
If it’s plausible to do it, it’s never too late to adapt it to your needs! 😉 If any of my options seem doable, just sketch some possibilities out and start photographing! 😀
Besides, what are Murphy and the gang up to, anyway? 😀
In this set up, going back means getting bit for any number of them and not means facing a bitter rival(s) at a key point for some mcguffin. However they just hopped out of a still noisy, cooling down, X amount of fuel, large, hard to get going truck that had a bunch of “death metal” followers off screen.
I’m not buying it! They’ll show up in 3… 2… 1…
Tell me they will!
I thought that at first, but it would depend on how well Vicky gets that zombie off her, plus there are many other zombies around that will no doubt notice the action and come for investigation and potential victims! 😀
I guess they should go back… Not to take them out (as I feel it’s kind of useless) but to get them out if they are still alive!